None of Us Want Our Bruises to Show

(Unless you’ve been bruised)

Some skin tones don’t show a bruise…

And, to me, that feels like a metaphor.

I have one of those skin tones. No matter how purple-swirled-blue a wound gets, it rarely ever shows.

“Can you see where they blew out my vein?” I’ll ask my partner, or (more recently) “Look at this incision!” and he leans in closer, squinting. My flesh, the soul-case I can’t control, conceals the greens and violets like a camouflage that doesn’t match the pain inside.

None of us want our bruises to show in reality… but when you’ve suffered the hurt in retrospect, and been dealt an unfair ache… it’s actually more painful to not have something to “show” for it. And this is something you can’t understand unless you’ve spent too much of your life pretending to stand strong when you’re not (always).

Unless you’ve been bruised, truly… the metaphor of wishing someone could “see” the boo-boo and kiss your hand seems silly. It is silly. But so is suffering in silence.

I control the muscles of my face carefully as needles invade, and comfort evades, and secretly hope someone notices how unflinching my expression. If there were an Olympics for pretending to be a bad *ss, I’d be the Biles. But there is no award for the reward of not crying or complaining when things hurt… and, for some of us, there isn’t even an ecchymosis.

Im technically not silent when something hurts… because I write about it. And even if that’s not how everyone processes things (or someone might even believe that showing your weakness isn’t a strength)…

This is my bruise.

Life hurts us. Every single one of us. And sometimes it shows, and sometimes we pride ourselves a little too much when it doesn’t. I’ve always thought that the latter was the only way to be. And maybe I’ll never be able to be vulnerable unless it’s on a page or on a stage… but there is beauty in wearing our purples and blues sometimes.

There is beauty in flinching.

Because feeling is something we all eventually feel.

Thank you!